Ultimately, in every B2B sales conversation, we have to answer one question, “How do we help our customers make money?”
Every business (for or not for profit) has a mission, strategies, goals and objectives. But ultimately, their ability to continue to execute their mission is based on their ability to make money. It’s that ability that funds everything they do. When they stop making money, they cease to exist.
As sales people, we have to be able to answer that question–ideally, we put together a business base that quantifies how much money we help them make.
I write a lot about business acumen, how important it is to understand your customers’ customers, their markets, industries, competition. We all know the importance of understanding our customers’ businesses, their strategies, and drivers. We have to quantify our value proposition. We have to constantly help our customers by creating value in every exchange.
But reduce all of that down to a single issue, we have to be able to talk to our customers about how we help them make money.
Can you answer that?
Our ability to answer that single question, to quantify how much money we can help them make transforms our conversations.
Price no longer becomes the focus. Discounting is no longer the issue. If that’s all the customer we talk to cares about, then we’re talking to the wrong person.
We need to be able to talk about how we help our customers make money, and we need to be talking to the people who care about this issue. Ultimately, these people are the decision makers.
Yes, there are other people involved, we have to talk about our features, functions, feeds, and speeds. We have to talk about the application of our products in solving their problems.
They may decide they like our products and want to buy. But then they have to go up the food chain to get funding allocated. Their managers have one concern, “How does this help us make money?”
Your customer may have budget allocated, they may not. It actually doesn’t matter. If we can help our customers make money, if it’s in an area that’s of strategic importance to them, they will find the money.
Struggling to get access to top executives? Wondering what to talk to them about? We struggle with Insight and Teaching Conversations. Those conversations may help the customer see new opportunities, discover better ways to run their business, improve their operations. Ultimately, the core of these conversations is about one issue: How we can help our customers make more money.
It’s pretty obvious, yet too few of our sales conversations address this issue. You’ll set yourself apart if you know how you do this and can engage your customer in a conversation about how you help them with this issue.
Can you answer this question for every deal you are working on?
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